Monday, November 7, 2011

After we bought our home in 2004, we were getting a lot done. We started our bathroom remodel in 2006. That took so long that we got burnt out and didnt do much again till we started the kitchen in December of 2008. But it was also around that time that we got serious about school and really got on track with finishing our degrees. I was trying to get into the nursing program, Brian was going for Computer Networking and we were both working full time. So of course the kitchen got completed in small sections. Very. Slow. Sections. And pretty much everything else got put on hold. I will post about the projects we had completed before school but for now, here are some highlights from the past couple of years.School kept us very busy. I got into the nursing program and started working weekends at the hospital. This entire bookshelf is filled with my nursing textbooks, notebooks and flash cards!

My parents renewed their vows in celebration of their

30th wedding anniversary in November 2010.

This is our graduating nursing class at Athens Tech.

We eventually graduated on June 9, 2010 (my birthday!).I got my associates degree in nursing and Brian got his associates degree as a network specialist!

Brian's mom and step-dad came into town for the week. It was great to be

surrounded by our family for this momentous occasion!

I took my NCLEX on July 1st and found out I passed on July 3rd! I started orientation as a nurse at Athens Regional on July 25th. And after 12 weeks of orientation (and one week of vacation) on November 1st I worked my first shift on my own! And that pretty much sums up the last year and 4 months!

Vacation pics from Panama City Beach in September!

So now that school is over, and I am adjusting to my new job and my new hours(night shift), the projects are starting to flow again. We have been a little burnt out on the kitchen so we started with some other smaller projects that we have been itching to get to-like everything on the outside of the house! We are excited to be finally getting some of these done. And we are VERY excited just to be done with school and able to spend more time together and be less stressed.

We just celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary on 10/26 and are looking forward to our 10th year together as husband and wife. It is exciting to be going into our 10th year and sort of starting the next chapter in our lives-"The Post School Years"! Here are some pics from our little getaway to Helen to celebrate our anniversary!

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Brian and I started out in a little apartment. It was fun for a year or so, but eventually apartment life became really annoying (loud neighbors, late night police sirens, etc). So even though we really enjoyed the no maintenance lifestyle, we were ready to buy a home. We really didn’t shop around very much. In fact, I don’t think we physically looked at any other homes than the one we bought. We were young and first time home buyers so we made some of the classic mistakes (not shopping around, not using a real estate agent, rushing into things). We purchased our home in April 2004.

Our first night in our new home!

Once the excitement of owning our own home faded, we found ourselves in slightly over our heads. Financially we were ok, but the workload of home maintenance plus 1000 things on our project-to-do-list left us feeling a little overwhelmed! If we could go back, we probably would have done things a little differently. But, with each project that we completed our house felt more and more like home. We finally have our heads above water and our home has become pretty cozy,
but there are still many projects left to do!

Now we are able to look back at our major house project fiascos and laugh!
Here are some before pictures of the house.

We weren't very good at picking out paint colors at first.
This was our peachy/rose living room. We were going for a neutral tan color.

This is the kitchen before we did anything with it. It had lovely rosey walpaper!

So we wanted to paint it a nice sagey green color. It came out mint green!

We wanted a rich chocolate brown for our bedroom. It came out the color of poop!
This is the bathroom before. It had hearts, ribbons and flowers wallpaper!